By Guilherme Cruz

Photo Esther Lin

On a 25-minutes battle, Ronaldo Jacaré dominated Tom Kennedy with a sharp stand-up game and won his first MMA title of the career, becoming Strikeforce’s middleweight champion. “I set a good strategy, my opponent came prepared to defend himself from my takedowns, so I moved a lot on the cage and I connected the best punches”, Jacaré told TATAME, explaining why he did not use his Jiu-Jitsu skills.

“It was the way I found to win this fight. Of course I prefer the ground fight, but it’s a long way until you get there and sometimes it ain’t easy, and I also thought he’d try to take me down too, so I’d use my strong point, which is my Jiu-Jitsu”, he explains, celebrating his good performance on the striking.

“I train very little the stand-up game, but I’m learning a lot from my coaches: Distak on MMA and Boxing, Cesário on Boxing, and Tunico on Muay Thai. I know it’s very important to me to evolve while standing up, because I want to be a complete MMA fighter: I have to be great on the takedowns, takedown defenses, stand-up game, making or passing the guard”, said.

Glad with the win, the marriage and the birth of his first son, Enzo Gabriel, the black-belt dreams with more. “I feel fine being the champion of Strikeforce, but I want more than that. My victory is gone, now I want to put my belt in line. I want to fight one more time this year”, concluded the champion, on a chat with TATAME.